Sacrifice and violence in the marketplace

Sacrifice is central to the flourishing of human culture and is integral to everyday life through practices of gifting, abstinence, donation and substitution. Consumer studies have predominantly taken a theological view of consumption-based sacrifice as medium of self-transformation, purification and transcendence to the realms of the sacred. Yet, there is a darker side to marketplace sacrifice. An alternative reading of sacrifice acknowledges the violence that is also often present in sacrifice – a violence that is directed and ritualised through the sacrifice of the scapegoat. Violent sacrifice can unite and reconcile conflicting individuals into a cohesive community, the taking of a life – at least symbolically – to restore social order and the status quo. This violent turn is missing from accounts of sacrifice and sacrificial gift giving in marketing and consumer studies that do not account for the deep, visceral, human desire for violent sacrifice – in both non-blood and bloodletting forms. To address this gap, I first introduce René Girard’s perspectives on violence, sacrifice and scapegoating to conceive an ideology of violent sacrifice in markets and consumption. I then re-examine extant market and consumer studies that investigate acts of sacrifice to reveal dimensions of violence and expand conceptions of sacrifice as being both light and dark. Thus, acknowledging the dual nature of sacrifice: purifying sacrifice to transform through abstinence and giving; and, violent sacrifice through mechanisms of scapegoating. Understanding these two faces of sacrifice has significant implication for marketing scholarship and marketing practice.